Turbulence Film Review: Up, Up, and Uh-Oh

A balloon ride turns deadly in Turbulence. It’s slick, forgettable fun with decent VFX and performances sharper than you’d expect.

Zach (Jeremy Irvine, Benediction) is a high-powered something-or-other who has just closed a deal that made him obscenely wealthy while cutting loose a number of loyal, tenured employees. The specifics of his business remain conveniently vague, but they hardly matter. What matters is that he’s en route to celebrate a belated honeymoon with his wife Emmy (Hera Hilmar, A Letter from Helga), hoping a scenic balloon ride will paper over whatever cracks have already formed in their marriage. The night before, a stranger named Julia (Olga Kurylenko, Thunderbolts*) sidles up to him at a hotel bar, testing just how committed this married man really is. 

Did she succeed? That question lingers when Julia appears the next morning as an unexpected third passenger, and you can bet her blackmail plans surface before they’ve cleared the first mountain peak. Kelsey Grammer (Frasier) rounds out the foursome as Harry, the balloon operator, a wizened fellow who can’t help but sing as they drift over the alpine scenery. No really, Kelsey, we’re good.

Reteaming with screenwriter Andy Mayson after their shark-meets-airplane thriller No Way Up, Fäh works with a small cast, and perhaps that intimacy explains why the performances land sharper than most low-budget European-filmed thrillers. Everyone plays their cards close to the vest, and I found that early caginess genuinely engaging. 

Hilmar makes for a sympathetic heroine caught between a potentially lousy husband and his blackmailing maybe-one-night-stand, with only an overly attentive balloonist keeping watch. Irvine hasn’t quite capitalized on the platform Spielberg handed him over a decade ago, but he fits the mold of a young mogul willing to go shady for the right deal. Kurylenko continues to get Goldilocks roles, ones that never feel quite right, though she wrings what nuance she can from late-game revelations that surprise even if they don’t entirely hold together logically. Grammer gets to fuss and bluster like the favorite grandpa he’s clearly auditioning to be. If you’ve seen the famous online video of him speaking at a conference years back, you might have a good idea of his trajectory here.

I’ll admit the VFX work impressed me more than I expected. Though most of the film’s visuals are computer-generated, supervisors Frank Kaminski and Philip Nauck, working with cinematographer Jaime Reynoso, occasionally craft something genuinely lovely. True, once the ride hits a stormy patch, it looks like the balloon is headed toward Mordor designed by Weta Workshop on an off day, but the illusion convinces more often than it distracts. Anyone with a fear of heights might feel woozy when characters peer over the basket’s edge. I certainly did. 

I speak from experience: when I was ten, my parents gifted me a balloon ride for my birthday. I went up with my dad and about ten strangers, and while the hour-long journey offered fantastic views, what I remember most is the landing. The basket crashed down on one side while passengers pressed against each other to counterbalance the weight as we dragged across an open field. For a scrawny kid, it was terrifying to be compressed among so many adults. That’s nothing compared to what Emmy and Zach endure, but it gives me perspective on the visceral unease Turbulence occasionally achieves.

The film could lose some early exposition outside the balloon, but once airborne, it moves aggressively toward its conclusion. There’s not much here beyond a need for entertainment, delivering base-level thrills before evaporating from memory. Is it worth a trip to the theater? Probably not, even with its sky-high views. At home, though, if airborne suspense is your thing, this will do. And a bonus: it won’t scare you off booking a real balloon ride, because every disaster aboard is strictly user error. Around the World in 80 Days and The Chipmunk Adventure charted brightly colored balloon voyages that led to genuine adventure (the original 80 Days won Best Picture!), but Turbulence isn’t operating at that altitude. It’s looking for action and suspense, and while its production sometimes feels coach, its ambition to entertain is all business class.

Turbulence will be available to watch in theaters, on digital and VOD from December 12, 2025.

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